I'll try to create some saves where this can be observed right from loading the save (see edit above). i'll edit them in to this post when I have them, but in the meantime here's what I've observed so far:
- Happens with ship turrets too, so ship vs. ship combat.
- They do sometimes target turrets too, but definitely really hate the engines.
- Doesn't seem to be exclusive to the new Terran ships, because I've almost lost some battles against K's and I's when my turrets suddenly switch target for the engines (got in line of sight of them?) and start missing, meanwhile the Xenon ship is <40% hull and now regaining most of its shields.
To me, overall, it feels like 'disable target' command is always turned on, and for everything. So, some of the the new 4.0 OOS code for ships going after modules might have slipped into in sector/high-attention too.
As by-product, this possibly sometimes breaks the 'disable target' command during boarding operations and ships almost completely stop shooting and manual right click attack makes them disable the target. Could just be the ships I was using (Jian). But that's probably a bug report of its own, so i'll do that when I have more than a sentence (a save) for it.
edit: Minor update for a
-moment: Isn't default behaviour for boarding operations set to disable engines, unless the player changes it to something else at the start of it? Possibly related? Like, is it possible that one of my earliest boarding operations in early-game got glitched / somehow is now always on and now everything uses it during combat? That would kinda explain the hate for engines I've been observing, but not everything.
Update (saves):
Turned out to be harder than expected, as either the turrets were gone when I teleported in, or the ship(s) died before I got a scout into the system to teleport to. And also because destroyer weapon range makes them rarely to be in turret ranges.
Save 1: Tokyo vs. 2 Behemoths
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i712l8ues2cgh ... ehe.xml.gz
Fight is to your left on the map. Behemoth turrets clearly going for the engines of the Tokyo.
Save 2: K vs. TEL station
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fhstlnxcdkqyp ... ion.xml.gz
Fight is "south" from your location. Due to TEL plasma spam, I suggest pausing the game the moment it loads. Turrets seem to be going for the K turrets in this case (could be intentional), and not the engines (could be line of sight thing).
Save 3: K vs. Phoenix.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1bvxdywiiwn5u ... nix.xml.gz
Fight is far south from your location (next to a jump gate leading to scale plate). K turrets seem to actively target turrets and engines on the Phoenix. The phoenix dies relatively fast so might want to / have to reload few times for better observation.
Tried to hand-craft the situation, but was unable?:
Manually placed ships near the microchip station in Frontiers Edge. I suggest pausing as the game loads to avoid too many ships dying too fast.
Save 4: Combat started by me shooting at the station. Fight is right in front of you at microchip factory.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/acpbiymupeysu ... l01.xml.gz
Save 5: Same setup, but I was out of the system and combat started by order a ship to attack while out of sector. Fight is "north" of you at thesame microchip factory.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0cqw1x5kd01m9 ... l02.xml.gz